Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 March 15

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March 15

Punctuating a vertical list

I have a question about punctuating a list. I realize this might be done differently depending upon the national variety of English; so, I'm looking for an answer regarding American English. My question has to to do with displayed (i.e. bullet/numbered) lists with complex entries (multiple complete sentences) as opposed to lists of short phrases or single words. Assuming the list begins with a introductory statement that is marked by a colon, then how should the list items be punctuated if they consist individual entries where each is made up single complete sentences, each is made up of multiple complete sentences, there's a combination of in which some entries are complete sentences, some are phrases/fragments and some might even be another list (i.e. a list within a list). -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:42, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

I'd say that if some of the list items are complete sentences or longer, then you should punctuate every item as a complete sentence. --142.112.149.107 (talk) 07:58, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Parallelism leads to good writing; if you are going to make a list that consists of mostly complete sentences, you should make them all complete sentences. --Jayron32 11:21, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Agreed, and I would add that in such cases I try to ensure that the introductory statement is also a more or less complete sentence rather than a sentence that ends halfway (for example, “The considerations are as follows:”, rather than “We could consider:”). — SGconlaw (talk) 12:05, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone for the responses. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:15, 19 March 2021 (UTC)